


Strangers in the Dark

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Set Before the Season 1 finale, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 18:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21480709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: Sasha goes back to the archives in the middle of the night. She meets Jon and Martin, but they're not quite the people she knows.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 397





	Strangers in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, this is my headcanon that real Sasha is more beholding aligned than anyone realized. Also I just miss real Sasha very much and I'm very sad she got very little closure.
> 
> I wanted Jon and Martin to travel back in time to fight Elias before things became terrible. I am aware that writing it in the point of view of someone who literally has no context of anything is not a very good idea, but.... well, here we are.
> 
> Please enjoy!

It’s past midnight and Sasha shouldn’t be at the Institute at all, but she realized she left her bag there, and she had to come back for it. She rushes into the archives and catches sight of a familiar figure, lingering in the darkness.

Except there’s something wrong about the picture. She can’t quite tell what it is, but it’s not right. She knows it’s not right.

“Martin?” 

Sasha doesn’t like the Archives these days, especially late at night. If she’s perfectly honest, she doesn’t like going there at all. Not anymore. It seems a bit much, especially for a research job. A lot of it seems a bit too… strange. 

Don’t get her wrong, she started out in artefacts storage. She’s used to things not being right, to constantly feeling there’s something behind her that’s going to eat her if she relaxes, but what’s going on in the archives… It’s different. 

Something’s watching them and it doesn’t mean well.

(And no matter how bad things got in artefacts storage--and there were times it got _really_ bad--no one’s ever been so unsafe they had to stay _in _the Institute.)

She thinks she wants to leave--_properly leave_\--the Institute. Find something less exciting, but well… She can’t. It feels like she’s caught in some sick story and when have you ever heard of characters just walking out of the book? Something’s holding her there and she needs to see whatever’s happening through to the end.

(The boys wouldn’t survive a day without her anyway.)

Martin--or the thing that looks like Martin--doesn’t move. Sasha thinks he’s Martin, but still not right. Something about the shape of his face, probably, or the way he holds his body. Even in the darkness, there’s something unfamiliar about him. 

She shakes herself. It’s a silly thought. The place is spooky enough as it is. There’s no reason to give herself more reasons to be scared.

“Sasha?” he asks. He sounds confused, hesitant even. The voice is deeper than it’s supposed to be, but it’s probably just her mind playing tricks on her.

(_Scared, _she thinks. He sounds scared. But then again, he always sounds scared these days. But this was a different kind of scared.)

“Don’t mind me,” she says, forcing herself to sound cheerful. “Just left my bag here. It had my phone and a few documents I need to go through and--” She peers at him through the darkness, narrowing her eyes. He still hasn’t made any move to come out into the light. It makes her uneasy. “What’re you doing all the way there? You are wearing trousers are you? You should really start making a habit out of that if you’re living in the archives.”

He lets out a startled laugh. It echoes strangely. The archives seems a little too empty. Sasha forces herself to relax. It’s nothing. It’s probably nothing. Just her mind playing tricks on her. _Of course _it’s Martin. The dark’s just making her paranoid, that’s all.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, uh. I’m wearing clothes. That time with Jon was just an accident.”

“Are you alright?” she asks because his words come out a little too empty. There was a despondency that didn’t belong there. “Nightmares?”

Maybe that’s why he’s not coming forward. Martin talks a lot, but never about himself. She doesn’t like talking about her nightmares, either. She steps forward, fully-intending to try and comfort him, but Martin jerks back forcefully. He hits a desk and knocks down something that sounds breakable.

“Stay back,” he says.

Sasha tenses, automatically taking a step back. The voice is Martin’s. It sounds like Martin, same pitch, same accent, same everything, but it doesn’t _sound _like him. She’s worked with him a long time now and he _never _sounds like that. Never that forceful. Never that firm.

It sounds like a completely different person using Martin’s voice, speaking words that Martin would never say, in a body that looks like, but isn’t quite, Martin.

That sense of being watched is back. She thinks she hears something click in the distance, but her heart’s pounding too hard for her to notice anything properly.

“You’re not Martin,” she hears herself say. She _knows _it. She knows it with a certainty buried deep in her bones. There’s something in the archives, and it’s not the Martin she knows.

“What? Of course I am. I’m--”

“You’re not Martin. Who are you?” she demands. “No--No. You’re not even a who, are you? _What _are you? What have you done with him?”

Things are clicking into place faster than she knows what to do with. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she feels the wrongness deep inside her.

Sasha’s started carrying a pocket knife around, ever since she met Michael. Her hand wanders towards it now. It’s not going to make a difference. Martin has a more than a foot on her on a normal day. And she doesn’t know what supernatural power this _thing _pretending to be him has up its sleeve.

“Sasha calm down,” the Not-Martin says.

“Answer my question! What’ve you done with Martin?”

“Nothing!” he says. “Nothing, but you’re right! You’re right. I’m not the Martin you know, but _please, please _don’t ask more questions.”

Sasha raises her knife. Her hands are shaking too much to be effective, but the thing draws back anyway.

“Martin! Martin we have to go now!”

Footsteps from Jon’s office. The door opens and Sasha turns towards it, raising her knife. Her hands are shaking too much and it clatters to the floor. Her breath comes in too fast.

Jon stands in his office, but _it isn’t Jon. _His hair is longer than she’s ever seen it and there are scars that weren’t there before dotting his entire body, on his face, his neck, his hands. His eyes are gleaning, nearly glowing in the darkness, and very definitely not human.

_Run, _she thinks. She has to run, but she can’t make herself move. There’s nowhere to go. The person that isn’t Martin is on one side of the archives, near that old storage room where he’d been sleeping, and the thing that isn’t Jon is on the other side.

“Who are you?” she screams. “What are you doing here? What have you done--”

“Sasha?”

The thing that isn’t Jon steps forward, hesitantly, carefully. Hunched in on himself like he’s making himself smaller. The inhuman glow in his eyes lessens and it still doesn’t look like Jon, but it’s--it’s--it’s--

She sees it, which means it can’t hurt her. It’s an old superstition in artefacts storage: look at the thing, examine it, know it as well is possible, and it can’t hurt them. There’s a lot of things to fear in the Institute, but fear is only terrifying if you don’t understand it. It thrives on mystery, on being unknown. When it’s known, once the details are revealed, it doesn’t hold as much power.

“I see you,” she says. “I don’t know what you are, but I _see_ you.”

It can’t sneak up on her as long as she can see it and maybe, as long as she keeps her eyes on it, she can get out of this alive. 

“Sasha,” the thing pretending to be Martin says. Sasha doesn’t look at him, doesn’t let her eyes stray from that strange, glowing, hungry gaze. “Calm down Sasha. We’re not going to hurt you.”

It sounds a lot more like the Martin she remembers. That gentle, hesitant, placating tone. But she’s seen it now. Seen the differences. Heard what’s wrong. It can’t trick her anymore.

“No! You’re not them! You’re not--” She takes a deep breath. Tries not to let the sob rip out of her throat. “You’re not them. I see it now. You’re different and wrong and--tell me what you’ve done with them!”

“Sasha look at me.” Jon’s voice cuts through the air, sharp and tangible enough to hurt.

“Jon.” There’s a warning in Martin’s voice. Hard and completely unyielding. 

She doesn’t know these people. She wants to leave but she can’t make herself look away. She can’t make herself _leave._

“You are her, aren’t you?” the thing murmurs. “The real Sasha. I know what you look like now.”

Sasha is looking at the thing. She looks at it and she realizes that _it’s looking back._

She can’t move. She can see the thing but _it’s looking back. _A thousand eyes are descending upon her, and she can’t bear the weight of it, can’t bear that gaze, drinking her in, every part of her life, every detail, every memory she’s forgotten, being ripped out of her for all the world to see--

“Jon! Jon stop it!”

She feels a weight pushing past her as her knees buckle and she crumples to the floor. 

“It’s going to be alright, Sasha,” she thinks she hears Jon’s voice say. It was no more than a whisper. “It’s going to be alright. We’re going to make things better this time around.”

Sasha looks up just in time to see two figures disappearing into Jon’s office before the door slams shut. She waits for the voices, for the shouting, for any sound at all, but nothing comes.

Her entire body feels cold all over and her knees are still trembling, but she forces herself to get up. The silence in the archives is almost painful to hear. Her breathing is coming short, quick gasps as she takes step after painful step.

She clutches the doorknob, takes a deep breath, trying to center herself, before twisting it and pushing the door open.

The room is empty. Nothing at all. Just an office, more disheveled than is proper. She thinks she sees a yellow door out of the corner of her eye, but there’s nothing there when she turns towards it. 

That faint feeling of being watched, of a thousand eyes looking into her soul, lingers in the air.

\--

The next morning, she sees Martin and Jon. The _real _Martin and Jon. They aren’t hurt or taken or dead. They don’t even give a single sign that anything’s changed with them. Martin fumbles and stammers and Jon is annoyed, unscarred, and very definitely human.

Sasha wonders if she should make a statement about it, if she should tell them what she saw last night. It’s hardly the strangest thing that’s happened to them in the past week, but. 

That feeling of being watched is still there. It’s hungry and it’s watching her and it’s waiting for her to give it a show. Instinct tells her to talk about what happened, but that feels too much like giving it what it wants. Sasha refuses to let it see into her more than it already has.

She looks at the Jon and Martin she knows and stays silent.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [acediscowlng](https://acediscowlng.tumblr.com) on tumblr and I'm currently in podcast hell. Please talk to me.
> 
> As always, your comments give me life <3


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